The most curious asset of this film is a very young and irresistible Anouk Aimée ("Anouk") as the innocent girl who is totally unaware of what is going on although her boyfriend is deeply mixed up in it, which makes her worried without knowing for what. As it happens, the archaeologist Trevor Howard enters and makes things happen in this off-side village in Tunisia where corruption flourishes, in which everyone is involved. It is therefore a rather unpleasant film, with Herbert Lom as villainous as ever, and Miles Malleson as inimtable as ever as the local chief of police, who isn't quite as innocent as he should be either. It all amounts to a bloody mess of troubles mainly for Trevord Howard himself, and it might seem objectionable that he falls for la belle Anouk while he knows the truth about her boyfriend, in whose case his meddling didn't quite work oui as he had intended. A key figure is Wilfred Hyde-White, constantly sitting drunk by the piano playing the wonderful "Clopin Clopant" and saying very little but in the end doing what is needed to resolve a hopeless situation just by a very small hint. He was never better, although he always was a crown jewel in every film he was in.
Review of Golden Salamander
